Silent Film Resources

Welcome to Silent Film Resources, a page on the Louise Brooks Society website. Listed below are links to websites and blogs about various silent film era personalities, as well as links to film history sites, film festivals, theaters which show silent films, musical accompanists, and the companies which release silent movies on DVD / Blu-ray. If you can, go see a silent film in a theater, attend a film festival, or buy a DVD or related book. Or subscribe to a blog or YouTube channel, or contribute to a related GoFundMe. Your interest and show of support in whatever form means a lot to the film programmers, producers, authors, historians, webmasters, fans and others who do what they can to keep silent film in the public eye.

There are also some worthwhile (and some dreadful) Facebook pages and Instagram accounts (and increasingly less so, Twitter accounts). Those platforms are worth exploring, as are blogs. Blogs can be a means of introduction to a performer or genre. The Louise Brooks Society blog, which is a longstanding member of CMBA (Classic Movie Blog Association), Classic Movie Hub (CMH), and Large Association Movie Blogs (LAMB), is just one of a number of early film blogs which populate a community of early film lovers.The right hand column of the LBS blog highlights other early film blogs as well as podcasts and newsgroups, like Nitrateville. All together, these sites form a community of individuals interested in early film. Check ’em out! This page is a work in progress. I hope to add more links / resources in the future. Are these lists missing a worthwhile site? Send suggestions via the CONTACT page. Links open a new tab. (last updated January 2024)

Thomas Gladysz
Director, Louise Brooks Society

FEATURED RESOURCE: STARTS THURSDAY!

Starts Thursday! is an amazing, must visit website about glass slides, or what were once known as “coming attraction slides.” As its homepage notes, projected glass “magic lantern” slides were part of the cinema-going experience from the earliest days of motion pictures. These slides promoted local merchants, pitched products, informed, instructed, and scolded audiences, and advertised upcoming film programs. Starts Thursday!, which is curated by film preservationist Robert Byrne, presents his ongoing quest to locate, catalog, and present the full breadth of cinema glass slides, from across the decades and from around the world.

This amazing, must visit website (did I say that already?) displays more than 9,000 beautiful, hand-colored glass slides of all kinds, the vast majority of which are tied to individual films from the silent and early sound era. And yes, there are a number of films featuring Louise Brooks included on the site – as there films starring Clara Bow, Buster Keaton, Charlie Chaplin, Rudolph Valentino, and others.

Visit Starts Thursday! at https://www.startsthursday.com/

FEATURED VIDEOS


Kevin Brownlow on Silent Films	Dennis James Silent Film Concerts

Silent Film Resources

ACTORS & ACTRESSES

EARLY FILM HISTORY (resources / research)

VENUES & FESTIVALS

SILENT FILM ACCOMPANISTS (they help make magic happen)

DVD & BLU-RAY

FEATURED VIDEOS